Posts Tagged: "Senator Ed Markey"

Last week the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing to conduct oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Although there was the typical overblown bickering over the FCC’s action on net neutrality rules taken in recent months under FCC Chairman Ajit Pai that one might expect, much of the day’s hearing focused on the poor quality of current broadband coverage maps employed by the FCC in distributing subsidies as well as the need to improve broadband deployment to reach millions of Americans living in rural communities.

On the morning of Tuesday, July 12th, members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation convened for a hearing on a notice of proposed rulemaking recently issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The hearing, titled How Will the FCC’s Proposed Privacy Regulations Affect Consumers and Competition, did much to talk about the potential effects of the FCC’s increased oversight of broadband Internet service providers even as partisan viewpoints among committee members were exposed.

At the end of October, the FTC again made a push on Capitol Hill for stronger data privacy standards, this time dealing specifically with the idea of connected cars. In prepared testimony for the hearing, entitled Examining Ways to Improve Vehicle and Roadway Safety, the commission brought up concerns it had with certain provisions of rules currently being drafted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which will require auto manufacturers to outfit their cars with vehicle-to-vehicle communications units in an effort to improve safety on America’s roads. The testimony was presented by Maneesha Mithal, an associate director of the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, during an October 21st hearing of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation addressed whether unmanned aerial systems (UAS), also known as drones, could be further incorporated into American airspace for commercial purposes. Drones have enjoyed a growing profile in our collective consciousness thanks in large part to both the incredible array of applications for this technology as well as the concerns over public safety and privacy. Drones can take much of the danger out of work such as utility line inspection or search and rescue missions but their ability to capture images with high-definition cameras has led many to worry about a growth in unwanted snooping by drones.